The sole climber who survived a 400-foot fall in Washington’s North Cascades National Park passed out for several hours, woke up in the dark and drove 40 miles to a pay phone to call for help, telling the dispatcher he could “hardly breathe,” newly released recordings reveal.
Anton Tselykh was the only survivor after he and three climbing friends slid into a sheer mountainside gully, known as a couloir, when their climbing anchor failed last weekend, according to The Associated Press.
“The whole team went down,” Tselykh, 38, said in audio obtained by the AP on Thursday. “We basically slid and rolled down, like all of us, to the bottom of the couloir and a little bit lower.”
The experienced rock climbers had been descending the mountain to avoid an incoming weather system at around 5:30 p.m. Saturday when they fell, Okanogan County Undersheriff David Yarnell told NBC News. All landed entangled in their climbing gear. All but Tselykh were killed.
The Okanogan County Sheriff’s Office identified the three fatalities as Vishnu Irigireddy, 48; Tim Nguyen, 63; and Oleksander Martynenko, 36, all from the Seattle suburb of Renton.
Tselykh, knocked unconscious, woke up in the pitch dark at about 10 p.m., suffering from head trauma and internal injuries. Rather than using the group’s GPS communication devices to call for help, he felt his way to the car over rocky, snowy terrain, Yarnell said.
Though emergency services were available to the east, Tselykh drove west. He was coherent when he called 911, though ended up hospitalized.
“My face is very well beaten, hands and my ribs, I can hardly breathe,” Teslykh told the dispatcher.
Teslykh was in satisfactory condition by Wednesday at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, hospital spokeswoman Susan Gregg said.
With News Wire Services
